MeritAid.com Makes It Easier to Find College Scholarships
Published on - September 10th, 2008 (Modified on - September 14th, 2008) (by J.D. Roth) Note: Readers are not impressed with MeritAid.com. The recommend instead that people search FastWeb. For more suggestions, see this Newsweek article.
I have a friend who works in the financial aid department of a large public university. He’s passionate about helping students manage their money, both for academics and for Real Life. Several times he’s complained to me that most students don’t do enough to pursue more financial aid.
“There are so many scholarships and grants that go unclaimed every year,” he says. “Some students know this, and they spend a lot of time researching them. They do very well for themselves.” It can be difficult to find these elusive scholarships, however, without a little help. MeritAid.com is a new site designed to do just that. From the site’s About page:
As it becomes more difficult to fund a college education, what many students and parents don’t realize is that more than $11 billion in merit-based scholarships provided by colleges are available to incoming students. Most students become aware of these significant merit scholarship opportunities only after they are accepted.
That’s why we started Meritaid.com, the Web’s first comprehensive directory of merit-based scholarships from colleges. We want to make it easy for you to understand how much merit aid is available to you from colleges across the country before you apply.
In fact, many students may not even apply to certain colleges because they seem too expensive when in reality, with the help of merit aid, previously out-of-reach colleges may be affordable. These scholarships can even make some private colleges as affordable as state schools.
You can learn more by reading the merit aid FAQ and a list of 5 merit aid myths.
MeritAid.com is new, and I have not used it myself. (At nearly 40 years of age, I’m no longer interested in college scholarships!) However, it’s exactly the sort of tool I would have valued twenty years ago, when I was still in school. And remember: merit aid scholarships aren’t just for 4.0 students — they’re awarded for all sorts of achievements.
Can you recommend other good sources of financial aid information?
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Does this go for Grad school as well (MBA)?
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It would be great to know of a site for canadian students
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This post came at the right time for me because I am currently looking into scholarships for at least the next two years. Hopefully this site will thrive.
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Several years back, I used to work for FastWeb.com, which is a scholarship search engine for college students. We also operated FinAid.org, which is just chock-full of totally free information for students on financial aid information, on loans, the FAFSA, and all sorts of stuff. I don’t know how they compare to this new site, but as for FastWeb, when I worked there, we had a research team nearly as big as our IT department whose job it was just to find scholarships to put in the database to match our searchers with, and they did pretty darn good work. We used to get fan mail from students who were able to go to school because of information they’d found on our sites, which was nice.
So I would encourage people to look at those sites as well (FinAid especially).
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http://www.fastweb.com is great. I found it to be an excellent resource for both finding scholarships to apply for and useful articles on the application process.
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This sounds like an incredible tool for students looking for scholarships. If you could find out all you need to know about scholarships for ever university/college on one site then of course you would go there.
I would love my site to contain everything you need to know about entrepreneurship but I am afraid that is completely impossible
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The internet is an incredible tool for furthering the scholarship search. I am a student at a very expensive out-of-state school (tuition w/o room and board is something like 36k this year) and look forward to this resource.
However, I cannot stress enough one particular step in this process: Make an appointment with a competent financial aid counselor at school. Private school grant and scholarship systems have many caveats – in particular with regard to how external funds are applied to existing aid. One thing that I do with my main scholarship is apply it against my loans (rather than against work-study). Work-study does not result in interest and pay-off after college…loans do.
Thanks for a great resource!
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husband’s college has pages and pages of listings for local scholarships for their students. it’s all on the financial aid section of their website.
unfortunately, meritaid.com doesn’t have any listings for his community college.
also, check with professional associations and relevant workplaces that may offer scholarships. we have applied for a full-ride scholarship from a hospital auxiliary and are going to apply for a $1000/semester, 2-semester award from the regional professional association soon.
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The problem often isn’t one of finding scholarships, but getting your kid motivated enough to actually apply.
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Thanks for this info, J.D. As permanent US residents with no college savings and only 2yrs before our first child is college age, we feel as if we are hurtling towards the financial abyss at frightening speed. We are only just digging ourselves out from under the ‘no credit rating’ penalties inflicted upon us by the move and now this.
I am desperately trying to understand the college application system here and to find some way of funding our kids education without condemning them to a lifetime of debt. They have a lot to give their adopted country and are highly motivated. This will help us know where to apply.
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Any sites out there for UK unis? I apply very soon, and it’d be nice to know. University websites sometimes seem deliberately designed to entangle me…
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I just tried MeritAid – my issue with it is that it will show you whether or not the school in question gives Financial Aid.. but it doesn’t enumerate the opportunities. Their way of contact is letting the colleges contact you. If this works for you, great; as it is, I’m going back to FastWeb.com.
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Thank you, Jamie! I was hoping somebody would give it a try and report back.
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I used fastweb.com to look for scholarships (don’t recall if I ever actually applied for any I found there, though). My high school gave us information on lots of scholarships and I applied for most or all of those that I qualified for. The college I went to had a number of scholarships that you were automatically eligible for or they sent you information on how to apply – those didn’t take much research on my part. Check with your college’s financial aid office. Also check with any organizations (professional or hobby) you or your parents are members of. Workplaces often have scholarships available for employees or relatives of employees. Places like Target and Wal-Mart also offer scholarships.
Now I’m in my “second round” of school and haven’t applied for nearly as many scholarships. I need to get with it!
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I agree with Jamie, I was hoping for a tool to narrow down possibilities, not provide options that aren’t even valid. after filling in information about my area of intended study (MBA) the matches shown included community colleges…not quite efficient. Even looking at specific universities there was too much to wade through.
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For international students, be sure to check out InternationalScholarships.com. Also check out StudentScholarshipSearch.com – I run that site, full disclosure – which doesn’t require you to fork over any personal info to see scholarship listings.
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Keep age out of it, please. I’m 38 and a full-time (first-time) undergrad.
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Good point, Emily!
By the way, the current issue of Newsweek has a Jane Bryant Quinn article about other merit aid resources.
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I’ve tried it. It works better if you are in a BIG public University but for a small 2 year college (not to mention the richest one in the northwest) its the most useless thing I’ve seen yet. Yeah, I’m struggling pretty bad to get the funding but now I’ve got to deal with more “join this online college now!” bs.
I mean, I know that FastWeb is bad but useable while this is just crap.
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Kudos to sites that work at providing this useful information for free. In the early 90′s I went looking for scholarships and grants but only found over worked (maybe lazy) school reps and companies looking to make a big buck off of me for their services.
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Thanks for your interest and feedback on our new site, MeritAid.com.
We started the site to provide students access to this important information and to make it easy to find. MeritAid.com is designed to supplement existing online financial aid resources, not replace them. We always recommend that students take advantage of all sources of financial aid, including government grants and loans, private scholarships, employer funds and merit aid. Merit aid is one piece of the puzzle for students and parents researching both ways to pay for college as well as schools to consider that are within their financial reach.
We also appreciate the feedback on the site itself. We are working hard to enhance the features and functionality as the site grows.
Chris Long
President, MeritAid.com
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There are a number of good websites geared towards private scholarships. Fastweb.com is probably the best known of them. You can also try collegetoolkit.com, brokescholar.com, scholarshipexperts.com, and scholarships.com. Most private scholarships, while generous, are only in the $1,000 range. Compared to the over $40,000 of tuition at many private institutions, that is a drop in the bucket. Meritaid.com attempts to index college based scholarships, which are a larger source of college funding. Another site that does so and also gives you specific information about the amounts of scholarships and scholarship deadlines is http://www.collegetreasure.com. I actually founded that site, and would appreciate any feedback on how to improve the site. We are working on a site redesign that should be done very soon.
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